The libertarian line is not actually a simple line of reasoning, but rather several interwoven ones. Because of assorted in-person fights on the topic...I figured I ought to attempt to set down the whole libertarian line in a single spot, understanding that libertarianism is a political direction (less government tends to be preferable), not a single position (no government is best).
Furthermore...it's important to understand that epistemologically (Aretae's 2nd favorite word, after iterative) no one (+/- 3%) believes any one thing for any one reason. Rather, (rational) people believe things for a host of reasons, all of which together (in Bayesian multaplicative fashion) mean that the sum total weight of belief on one side of an issue is at least a little more than the sum total weight on the other side of an issue. Careful thinkers remember that the sum total of arguments on one side of a position do not mean that the sum total of arguments on the other side are bad...and so tend to have positions between 50 and 60% certainty. However...it's also true that once one has a position buttressed by a dozen or so different lines of argument, then even demolishing a single line of argument doesn't have much effect.
Argument path 1:
The state isn't special. AKA "Lose the we"
Fundamentally, if one person shoots another person because he doesn't like what they're smoking, it's immoral. We call that person a murderer.
If 10 people agree to hire a shoot someone if they smoke something they don't like, it's immoral. We call that group a mafia.
If 1000 people get together, hire someone to shoot someone who smokes something that at least 500 don't like, we call that group a state, and most people decide that's ethically ok. Bullshit.
Same moral rules for individuals and state actors.
Argument path 2:
The notion of consent and common-good action is largely fictional AKA "exit over voice"
A party system wherein two rich groups of people use tribal instincts and media consultants to give a choice between two effectively indistinguishable choices is not "choice". It's damn close to a conspiracy.
A system that consolidates economic power produces public choice behavior where those people who care about (and are motivated to know about) economic power pull the strings. Necessarily.
A system with lots to regulate cannot be understood, or legislated by the people making the laws. Roughly all law-making will eventually be outsourced to un-elected, un-representative, un-accountable folks. Like our system.
A system wherein 70 % of the citizenry are eligible to vote, 60% of the eligible voters vote on a good year, 30% of the eligible voters are partisans of one side or another, and 50% of those partisans are partisans only because the other side sucks even worse means that any election is won by 6% of the population getting a candidate they would like. We call that a popular mandate...and allow the winner to make decisions that impact everyone.
Argument path 3:
Distributed Knowledge
Hayek, hayek, hayek.
Central planning is impossible to be efficient. Any decision made by central planners is certain to give people less of what they want in the short term than what they would choose via markets. The planner cannot have enough knowledge to make decisions, as most knowledge that makes decisions isn't even explicit knowledge. It's implicit knowledge, not yet formalized into a system by the knowledge's owner.
Argument path 4:
Iterativity & Error
Probably the best discovery in the past 50 years of business is that your first guess is always wrong...and you will find out after you try it. Your second guess is wrong too...which you will find out after you try that. The only path to getting good value for customers is to guess, and then update lots and fast. By observation, governments are hideously bad at updating. Laws and agencies especially are really bad paths towards solving problems, because they're especially hard to update (read get rid of).
Argument path 5:
Competition
Competition sucks very badly for the entities engaged in competition, and the customers of said entities benefit massively. Government intervention in the market 99% of the time reduces competition, rather than enhancing it. Any competition-reducing mechanism is primarily a method of transferring money from poorer folks to richer.
The key element in competition is allowing failed enterprises to die, and successful enterprises to live. Government works incredibly hard to prevent this. See: public schools, post office, etc.
Also, the government is monopolistic. Since it is monopolistic, it has no external standards to compare itself to, and will not improve at the speed that competitive enterprises do.
Argument path 6:
Real disagreement
In the case where Al disagrees with Bob over what to do...in most cases, it's not because Al or Bob is immoral or obviously wrong...it's because they really, honestly, and at least semi-intelligently disagree. In this case, the solution of Al trying to get the gun that makes Bob do what Al wants seems full-on evil. In cases of real disagreement...9 times out of 10, the correct path is for Al to try Al's thing, and Bob to try Bob's thing...or Al to persuade Bob to try Al's thing. Offering to shoot Bob if Bob doesn't do it Al's way is almost always the worst option available...and the only option from the state.
Argument path 7:
States are evil.
In the history of the world...the greatest killer of people in history is germs. 2nd is states. Full stop. I don't even think there's room for argument on this as a historical fact. There is room to dispute whether all states are evil, or just most states are evil, or just states with some characteristics...but that most states both now and throughout history have been moderately actively evil is hard to deny. And, the more power they have historically had, the more likely to be evil (Lord Acton).
Also...See Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, plus the usual mid-century suspects. "The Great" in history is short for "Killed a metric-ass-ton of people"
Argument path 8:
State actors *should* be evil.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has come as close as possible to a closed-form definitive game-theoretic proof of the optimal behavior for a state-actor. Universal correct response: Screw the citizenry, help your friends that keep you in power. Any other action is likely to result in your losing your job as state-actor. Far and away the best serious way to help your friend, without undermining his base of power that makes him valuable to be your friend is to limit competition with however he makes his money.
Public choice analysis plays here too. Any person acting as a state actor (shit...and person in any organization who wants to stay in the organization) must, in order to accomplish *any* goal whatsoever, accumulate both operative power, and staying power in order to accomplish said goal. Run this game theory for a few iterations, and it becomes true that for all realistic goals, the accumulation of power becomes the pre-empting goal #1. All state actors should have as their effective goal unlimited power.
Argument path 9:
States suck at whatever they do
By observation, for any given nominal goal, states are bad at it. If there is a non-state solution to *any* problem, it will be solved better by non-state action than by state action.
Argument 10:
Freedom
Freedom is an ultimate (political) goal. Freedom is not something you choose in order to get something else. Rather, freedom is a good in and of itself. There needs to be a presumption against violating freedom. Depending on how rabid you are (me: frothing at the mouth, about to die wolf), you can assert that this freedom is ultimate, or simply the default presumption. Every state action is an action against freedom. Bad.
Argument 11:
Goal != effect
The question of government should not just be about goals, but rather about results. How well has the government war on drugs gone? Poverty? Terrorism? Iraq? By observation...the government methods used to attack problems have not solved those problems, but in many cases, made the problems worse. Perhaps, but not certainly, government is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
In particular, the problem of poverty is problematic. Poverty (by far) is the biggest problem in the world, both now, and throughout all of history. The key question around poverty is how to alleviate it. The government response to poverty in the Western world has been nothing short of atrocious. First, the government prevents the country from gettting richer, and second, it doesn't solve the problem. If we simply shot everyone involved with government provision of poverty programs in the USA, and distributed the money evenly to everyone in poverty in the states...I'm pretty sure that would work out to a moral win.
Folks like Will Wilkinson argue persuasively that the Scandanavian model: Get as rich as possible, and redistribute a lot to the poor is far preferable to anything anyone else is doing..
Argument 12:
The Principal-Agent problem
Government is composed of individuals. Those individuals have goals. The citizens/electors have goals. The elected politicians have goals. At 2-levels removed, there is no reason whatsoever to expect that government actors should be acting in the electors' interests.
Argument 13:
Government primarily maginfies the power of the already powerful
If the government does little, then the powerful have to rely on their own resources in order to get what they want. If the government does lots, then the rich and powerful can effectively lobby the government to additionally solve their problems rather than not interfering, and this result is far more likely than the poor successfully lobbying government actors to protect the poor from the rich.
Argument 14:
The government displaces other solutions
Before the government offered welfare, private entities ran soup kitchens. Now the government runs all anti-poverty programs, and makes laws preventing non-government ones from serving unhealthy food.
Before the government offered public schooling, kids were almost universally literate (in the USA). Now private schools are a tiny fraction.
Before the government stepped in, offering welfare, AFDC, husband substitutes...the black marriage rate was pretty high. Now it's pitifully low.
When the government acts, it displaces the other, sometimes community, sometimes private efforts to solve the problem. Often the solution provided by the government is less effective than the private solution was. Certainly, the government solution evolves less well.
Argument 15:
Organizations exist to serve themselves
For all organizations, the size of the organization, the age of the organization, the likelihood/possibility of the organization going out of business (losing customers), and the quality of the feedback mechanism from the customers are the primary factors that determine how good the organization is at serving its customers. The US federal government is the 250 years old biggest organization in the world, and has no fear at all of going out of business, and gets crappy yes/no feedback roughly every 4 years. It should be the worst-run organization on the planet for the purpose of serving it's customers. It's close...because most of the worse ones aren't there to serve the customers.
Argument 16.
Complex systems, unintended consequences
The modern social/economic system is tremendously complex. Any action in a complex, non-modularized system has both intended and unintended consequences. See, for instance medicines. Medicines to help with erectile dysfunction help to cause heart-attacks. See for instance, biosystems...the introduction of ferretts to chase down rabbits has been known to cause ecosystem collapse. See for instance the economy. Government intervention screws up complex systems badly.
Also, re-referencing the decline of the black family, which was predicted by my black grandmother-in-law when welfare was introduced. She thought Welfare was a deliberate plot to destroy the black family. I personally don't figure government is that smart.
Prohibition and the drug war have created more crime than any other government actions we can find. While that's known now, and why police and prison guard unions massively support the drug war now...I don't think that the goal of either was to massively increase crime?
Argument 17:
Government != society
Oftentimes arguments against libertarianism, there is a conflation of Government and Society. Government is not society and society is not government. Government is a small group of people in society who have somehow managed to grasp the reins of violence, and the treasury. Society is usually a group of people who'd like to live their lives, and help their neighbors. Government are the people who prevent you from giving your used toys to needy kids because they might not be perfect toys. And then they take your money, and buy new toys and give those toys to the needy kids.
Argument 18:
Trade is effectively always good
Trade is what happens when you have an orange that I'd be happy to buy for $2, you would sell it for $1, and then you sell it to me for $1.50. I'm 50 cents richer than I was before the transaction...and so are you. Trade is good...3/4 of the total value in the world comes from moving stuff from low-value states (posessed by someone who doesn't want it much) to high value states (posessed by someone who wants it more).
The government's entire interaction with trade is to prevent it...or make it flow to politically connected constituencies.
Argument 19:
Regulation is almost always supported by big business, but hurts small business
As a near-universal truth...regulation is more easily navigated by large organizations with swarms of lawyers than by small firms with few lawyers. Further, fixed cost regulations (almost?) always fall harder on smaller firms than on larger firms. As a general rule, one can find the big players in any given industry as strong supporters of any given regulation...as it gives them a competitive advantage, and a barrier to entry. Usually, this (net) screws the consumers. From personal experience...Blue Cross was heavily involved in drafting ObamaCare...and it has far greater impact on smaller insurers, than on big ones.
Argument 20:
Wealth
Wealth (social, individual, whatever) is the single biggest measureable factor impacting the quality of life in the world. Wealth is almost entirely a function of invention, and trying new things. Invention is almost entirely a function of competition...new firms trying to out-compete old firms (existing companies don't innovate and break existing lines of business...it would be stupid to). Governments do a whole darn lot to protect incumbent firms, and generally heavily bias the playing field away from upstarts. In doing so, governments destroy huge amounts of wealth. This is full on bad.
Which countries have become richest in the last 60 years? Singapore, Hong Kong. How much government? Very little. Low government action, especially low regulation, but also low taxes highly positively correlated with high wealth. Compare wealth of Singapore vs. wealth of North Korea or Cuba 1960 vs. now. Which system is better? Heck...Singapore appears to be the best system on the planet for the poor people of the country.
Argument 21:
Discovery
We don't know the right answer. We're just not that (collectively) smart. Trying to legislate the right answer is crazy. We need, desperately, to keep looking for better answers....not to lock a single answer in place.
----
Overall, there are a lot of lines that point loosely in the libertarian direction. None of this means that libertarianism is correct...or that libertarianism is a better solution than progressivism or conservativism. However, it does mean that there are a lot of reasons to lean in (or move closer to) a libertarian direction, regardless of what your other predilections are. Unless, of course, you're in government, in which case, your prime directive to accumulate more power (so you can do what you need to, unimpeded) is most threatened by libertarian sentiment.
What did I miss? Is this categorized well?
UPDATE: I've added more in part 2, mostly based on great feedback.
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86 comments:
Awesomeness!
Most of these may not be general enough, this is just off the top of my head:
Bootleggers and Baptists.
Rational irrationality (in the voting booth). Politicians pander to our biases, whereas in a healthy corporation, a great deal of effort is put into getting decision makers who can overcome those biases. c.f. the banking crisis.
Don't just do something, stand there.
Low welfare + freedom of movement vs. high welfare + immigration restrictions. It seems hard for people to hold both issues in their heads at once.
Freedom of association.
The God-shaped hole in our hearts that non-libertarians fill with the state. Stockholm syndrome. The reluctance to attribute bad motives to government agents. The transubstantiation of violence into non-violence e.g. gun control enforced by prison. Classical pagan temple to Lincoln in DC. Holy relics and writings in the National Archives.
Alex,
I'm going to keep improving this...but not just yet. Thank you for these.
I'll put Bootleggers and Baptists into "Goal != effect"
Rationality seems a critique of democracy specifically, as opposed to a pro-freedom line. Hmmm. I might fit that into my Al and Bob example.
stand there is a line...don't know how to fill it out. General conservativism? Don't break stuff.
I should do something with the welfare + movement thing. It's a subset of conflicting goals. Don't know where to drop it.
State as secular god is a strong idea...but I'm not sure how to spin that as a pro-liberty line. Seems like all variety of the counterpoint to the libertarian: State isn't special. Can you go further?
Kent, thanks.
I really don't see anything to argue with.
You might add some of the more unsavory examples of tribalism used in the defense of the political class.
Also the "I don't like it" -> "you shouldn't be able to do it". I haven't seen much about how this is used by the political class, but it cuts across both the left and right.
Borepatch. That 2nd one is a biggie. I need to work that in.
I have to break off, but it looks awfully good through point 15. I'll try to get to the rest later.
Ken,
Thanks for the checking. I warned you it was long.
Had to go teach a class. :-)
I read the rest, and I have only one suggestion, pursuant to point 17. Government most certainly does not equal society, but it's also possible to argue (depending on whether one wants to provoke cognitive dissonance) that: "government != the state." Government is how we regulate (make regular) our activities and interactions. Setting up a state is one way people have tried to ensure that their activities and interactions are made regular, but there are (arguably) other ways to go about it.
You complained when I compared you to Aquinas once. You're going to *hate* tomorrow's post.
;-)
I'm not sure I've said this before, but you are one scary smart Mofo. And I mean that reverently ...
I need to add at least:
22) Government/Regulatory Capture
For any case where one is hoping that one can use government to defend against a motivated, semi-coercive group of people (multinational corporations, for instance), one must expect that the coercive group can also capture the government. The libertarian tends to think this is inevitable, rather than just likely.
23) Regulatory Whack-a-mole
Regulations tend to be designed as if they can solve problems. Even if the regulations were designed by the best few minds on the planet, they aren't the most informed minds, nor the most motivated. Roughly 35 minutes after a new financial regulation is passed, Goldman Sachs (effectively) posts a $10 Million dollar bonus to the first person who figures out how to game the regulation, legally, but completely unfairly. Since $10M is more than the entire yearly budget for the group that got to write the regulation...they can't win the game. Regulators solve yesterday's problem, and cause tomorrow's.
22&23)
Ironically, beating down regulatory agencies really exercerbates these problems. These agencies aren't going away, and when they are attacked it usually takes the form of being given fewer resources/clout/freedom. Then of course they get out manuevered by GS big time.
In everyone's favorite paradise Singapore they just up and pay their civil servents millions and give them a lot of free reign. Result, the best civil service in the world.
Aretae;
Constant reader, rare commenter. Borepatch sent me over for the first time a few years ago.
I am in awe of your ability to so succinctly and clearly sum up my entire outlook on life. It almost makes me feel small, like I'm being psychologically vivisected by a being much more powerful than I.
That being said, i think that you only missed one key topic and I'd love to see you get it wedged in there somewhere:
A person's/group's opinion on something being unsavory is not a moral reason to use the violence of state to deny others the ability to do it.
I don't like it != you should be kept from doing it through threats of violence.
I can think of many examples, and could go on for days about it, which is why I respect you so much - you sum it up a lot better than i ever could.
The entire idea of "civil service" is non-sensical to me.
Is the service needed, or is it not needed?
If it is needed, a private actor will provide it. If it is not being provided, 95% of the time it is because the service is not needed.
Why does my City own snowplows and dump trucks and tractors? Are they really arguing that a private contractor(s) can't perform that work? Are they really claiming that they can do it more inexpensively than a private contractor? What do they do with all the guys running that equipment when the snow isn't flying?
Why is it possible for private utility companies to bring me electricity and cable TV< but it is somehow impossible for them to provide me with water and sewer services?
Why are UPS and Fedex making a profit while the USPS is failing, despite its monopoly on first class mail?
Why are the dams on the columbia river that are owned by private actors clean, updated, and sporting the cutting edge of fish passage technology, while the ones owned by the government are old, ratty, outdated, and many of them don't even have a fish ladder?
Libertarian Manifesto
(after Aritae)
Large Organizations are:
Organic entities distinct from their members
Self-serving (arg 15)
Interested in self-preservation and growth
Hostile to competition (arg 5)
Unable to effectively organize and self-regulate (inefficient)
Rife with unintended consequences (arg 16)
Slow to iterate and learn (arg 4, 9)
About the organization and not the individual
Pushing away from equality of power (disequilibrium)
About regulation/restraint of (others’) trade
Government is a large organization with particular (unique) powers:
Claim to overarching authority
Backed up by monopoly of force (arg 1, 6)
Alleging popular support (arg 2)
But otherwise subject to same pressures and inefficiencies as any large organization
Overwhelming temptation to abuse power (arg 7, 8)
Inefficient at core (arg 9)
All government is vulnerable to “capture” by large, powerful, and wealthy organizations
Elections can be won by application of resources (adverts, contributions) and favors collected in form of favorable regulation and dual-standard enforcement of law
“Less government” faces the argument that big government is needed to regulate big organizations but fails to incorporate risk of “capture”
Libertarian values are:
Freedom (to discover, iterate, and fail) (arg 4, 10, 21)
Small, private initiative
Wealth and ability to allocate it however (arg 20)
Free trade (arg 18)
Competition (arg 5)
Education
Private charity
Market is smarter than any organization (arg 3)
Societal norms govern rather than organizations (arg 17)
Defensive violence only (no compulsion, but overwhelming retaliation)
Central control doesn’t work – there are always exceptions and unintended consequences – usually worse than base case of freedom (arg 11, 14)
Reference
Charles Hugh Smith: “Resistance, Revolution. Liberation” at Amazon
What I'm trying to get at with rational irrationality and also with State-as-God is an analogy with Hayekian distributed information: "Distributed rationality". Hayek says, "When he decides for us, he can't know enough." Caplan says "When we decide for us, we have no reason to even head in the right direction." And so, many biases become unconstrained and blow up. When I decide for me, I have reason to act rationally, and so these biases can be managed. When institutions can fail and be replaced, we come closer to institutions which make rational decisions.
Incidentally, I think Moldbug misses on this point. Broken corporations don't typically get fixed, they go under and get replaced.
Goober,
Thank you for the kind words. Yours is the 2nd request to put in that particular concept. I'll see if I can add it.
Also...the civil service bit has some confluence with something In Polumentis's list (Education, etc.)
Ken,
I have to think about gov't != state.
Alex, that is a good point. Apple being the one large exception. IBM, sort of, but it's really a completely different company with different aims now.
An extension of that idea is that things that aren't working aren't necessarily broken, just outdated. Old IBM was awesome at making big iron. Then, suddenly, no one wanted or needed it. Chrysler was at various times both broken *and* outdated, which sucked for them.
Trying and failing to imagine a world where states could peacefully wind up in receivership.
Amazing compilation!
Ive had all these ideas floating about when thinking of some issue, and often only some surface in the mind.
BTW Didn't you write a couple times that the Iterativity/complexity issue dwarfs everything else?
On another thought - read Scott Locklin's piece on seasteading at takimag.
One point he raised was that libertarians don't seem willing to fight for their liberties.
Assume for the sake of argument that the Aretaeian Libertoid Utopia is founded on a newly-created volcanic isle somewhere hundreds of miles from the nearest state. They've got land, convenient access to trade routes, etc.
ALU is a happy place, where contracts are honored, people are free to watch Ayn Rand in the privacy of their homes, etc. I'd probably love to live there.
Does their political philosophy include anything that might allow them to resist an invasion by those horrible, liberty-hating statists? And how might they organize themselves to do so?
Contemplationist,
Thank you.
I personally have slowly (over 25 years of libertarianism) shifted into my present position of: Iterativity/Complexity uber alles.
I admit to being rather single-minded in my opinion that the real problem underlying all other problems is a lack of iteration. But epistemologically, one reason isn't enough. This isn't how folks think. Folks add reasons. Hence this.
Perf,
Yes, libertarianism in general allows this. The difficulty is that libertarianism is generally supported by folks who tend to have low-social needs/attachment, and so tend not to all agree to fight together.
"Does their political philosophy include anything that might allow them to resist an invasion by those horrible, liberty-hating statists? And how might they organize themselves to do so?"
Define "invasion". Do you mean statists are immigrating there? Or statists are moving in to take over by force?
If they are immigrating, they will be outnumbered by "libertopians" and the structure of the very society would not allow tham to get away with resuming their coercive statist ways free of consequence (as they are accustomed to here).
If they are intent on conquering "Libertopia", whenever they initiate force they can be resisted and killed. Any organizing will be voluntary. Wouldn't you fight to preserve liberty?
@Kent - I'm asking about armed invasion, not stealthy immigration takeover.
And yes, theoretically, I would fight to defend my liberty. But if I saw absolutely no chance that it would succeed because there's a bunch of desperate yahoos all waving guns around in a highly individualistic yet not terribly effective manner, maybe not. Perhaps better to just accomodate and not get slaughtered?
Thousands of years of experience has generally told us that military operations require hierarchy and group solidarity. Unity of command is necessary because while in war all things are simple, simple things are hard. Different groups operating at cross purposes are death in a high-stress lethal environment where resources and attention are limited, often severely.
Group cohesion is needed to offset that natural and reasonably tendency of individuals to avoid situations where they will get killed.
Now, there are levels of hierarchy. Some of the most effective militaries have had fairly flat organizational structures, with minimal hierarchical levels. The Germans and Americans have both pushed a fair amount of command authority down to the noncom level. The US has toyed with notions of 'netcentric' warfare and swarming. Perhaps these could be useful. Perhaps a group of talented libertoids with drone swarms could do a lot to a lumbering statist military.
But while we mythologize the minutemen from the revolution, they actually pretty much got their asses handed to them every time they tried to fight on a scale larger than sniping from behind trees - and sniping behind trees doesn't win. It wasn't until they reformed on a more traditional basis that they won at all, and wouldn't have won the big fight had not the French Navy pitched in.
Based on all my reading of military history, I have serious doubts that an unorganized or self-organizing distributed force could defeat a traditional military that has even a modicum of ruthlessness without first mutating into a non-libertarian force.
The only exception I can see is that if the tech level of the libertoids is significantly higher than the statist invaders. Much, much higher. Also, generally speaking most libertarians seem to have a lot of ruth, and too little ruthless.
Seasteaders or similar 'new country' libertarians would honestly need something like a submarine launched nuclear weapon deterrent if they wanted any reasonable probability of remaining independent. Even that might not be enough---they might require a doomsday weapon a la Strangelove that they remembered to actually announce.
Why do libertarians want to be ruled by corporations?
perfidy- I don't see that organization and cooperation requires, necessarily, hierarchy. I don't have to be ordered around to accomplish a group goal (in fact, I tend to do the opposite when ordered). What I do require is respect for the person giving the instructions, and trust in his/her ability and expertise in the matter at hand.
Furthermore, here I am only speaking for myself, if a free society can't survive without becoming an unfree society, and embracing coercion/etc., making it ethically the same as those they are being attacked by, then good riddance.
Goethean,
1. This isn't my goal here, to argue these...but I'll make an exception.
Most of us don't like corporations and certainly don't want to be ruled by them. But we find that corporations that control government are even better at controlling us than corporations with no government support...and so we oppose government as a tool the corporations will inevitably use to control us.
Perf,
I, contra Kent, am aware of your issue. Which is part of why I'm trying very carefully to couch this discussion in terms of direction, not end-state.
goethean- What? Corporations are government-created fictions. Monstrosities that are just a part of the government. What makes you think any libertarian wants them to even exist, much less be ruled by them? I want a free market- which hasn't existed in quite a while.
Kent,
Great reminder. I just stole it and added to part 2.
Kent, my concern is two-fold. One is, the nature of the people who hold these beliefs. The other is more structural.
First, as Aretae mentioned (and my own experience has tended to confirm) libertarians are often, "folks who tend to have low-social needs/attachment, and so tend not to all agree to fight together." Well and good. However, in normal history, this problem has often been overcome, and often as a result we have ripping yarns about them. The American Revolution, the Texans v. the Mexicans... many more. But the problem has been overcome by means of traditional military ways of making armies, and soldiers. Boot camp; instilling espirit de corps; loyalty to the institution of the army, and a sense of brotherhood with one's fellow soldiers; and a habit of obedience.
Again, historically, these methods have clearly not been considered to be inimical or mutually incompatible with ideals of freedom and liberty. Now, modern libertoids or the inhabitants of the ALU out in the middle of the Atlantic may feel differently. But generally speaking, the basic rationalization for the presence of hierarchy-laden, obedience-focused military institutions in a free society is that they are composed of free men who have voluntarily chosen to abide the strictures of the military for the duration of their service. The citizen soldier. He obeys because, essentially, he has agreed to, regardless of the level of competence or trustworthiness of the the people placed above him; and regardless of the level of danger that he may be ordered to face. And will be coerced if he fails to follow his original agreement, even killed.
Would a society of modern libertarians view things this way, and engage in the sort of group attachment that has always been the core of successful armies? (Snarkily, one might ask, how effective is an army of aspergers going to be?)
On the structural side if one were to lay out a skeleton of libertarian beliefs hoping that in the fullness of time some flesh might grow on it that skeleton (hey, that's a fantastic idea - someone should do that!) one would have to have some sort of vague nod toward the reality that some people are dicks, and they often congregate in large numbers and attempt to kick the crap out of innocent free traders.
What sort of group defensive mechanisms are not only acceptable in the libertarian dispensation, but even encouraged as a safeguard against the predatory nature of less evolved humanity? What sort of collective, social mechanisms could be created to ensure the survival of the experiment past its first test with an aggrandizing neighbor? Because everyone having a hand gun and a don't tread on me sign isn't going to hack it.
This isn't end-state - and really, is more generally applicable in the sense of, say, looking back at the long history of electoral victories that have been achieved by group libertarian action.
It's thoughts like these that make me liken the libertarians to the Amish - they can flourish and hold their beliefs only within a society that takes care of things that they will not. For all that their critiques of the larger society are valid...
Perf,
The question that comes up for me is...how deep a hierarchy does there need to be?
I grant up front that guys who train together, work as a team, win over guys who don't. That was proven by...Greek Phalanx's and hasn't been really in doubt since.
On the other hand...and this is way the hell away from the core of the post...can one play a federated military without the deep hierarchy?
How well would the federated army-clubs of Libertistan do against an equivalently sized real army?
1. Pay to defend way of life.
2. Pay extra to the widow/children if you fall
3. More federation, less command (than normal...can't talk absolute... not my area of expertise).
OODA, Lean, ToC suggests that pushing decisions as close to the ground as possible***, and as late as possible is the key to success. So, the communication officers of each team hear...I need someone to handle this incoming group. They take (group) volunteers and go.
Teams of men trying to do something together tend to fall into an agreement to work together that's pretty effective, but that decision approach isn't always "orders".
On the other hand...you know 10x more than I do about this topic, Goblin-man...so I'll shut up. Food for thought? Or already solved? John Robb; Open Source Warfare; COIN; Counter-COIN?
Not terribly deep, ideally. We do already push a lot of things down to the level of sergeant or even corporal.
I think, honestly, that we are on the verge of radically different means of materials technology. And this will have a huge effect on fighting, obviously. Part of the problem we've faced, and part of the reason that we moved from state regiments equipping themselves and fighting in the Civil War to the national army with big guns and so on, is that the really frightful firepower was simply beyond the means of any individual or reasonable group of individuals. So, it fell to states to organize and procure that firepower, and the organizational means to employ it.
Hypothetically, a group of libertarian peasants in the middle ages could have self-organized and supplied themselves with a sufficiency of state of the art weapons. The problem, though, is training, which is why the knights were ascendent for a long time.
We can imagine now a scenario where tech-savvy libertarians with access to 3d printers and circuit printers could assemble some frightfully effective drone swarms that would do wondrously lethal things. But again, training - and logistics.
What you suggest is coordination based on deep familiarity and tightly-knit communications. That is to say, long and effective training. Who will conduct, or sponsor that training, even assuming that the individuals or group can get access to weapons? Training costs money and time. That is where the advantages of the state come into play.
John Robb is a very bright guy. And he's right on the details almost every time. But... Our lumbering statist military forces to embrace (at least in places) OODA loops, distributed intelligence and decision making, COIN, etc. And they have the luxury of training and logistical support of the leviathan, which our doughty band of libertarian reservists do not.
I think that a very high tech army-club type force - minutemen - composed of gun enthusiasts and war gamers could do well against an average (world average, not first-world average) military force, especially if they went real deep on drones, smart weapons and had their own means of supply and some sort of open-source logistical crowd sourcing apparatus.
But against the Brits, Americans, Germans... not so well, even if the numbers were even.
I don't think this is that far away from the core of the post, at least as I conceive of the core. The libertarian manifesto has to match up with reality, and this is once instance (obviously one that relates to stuff that is of great interest to me) where the ideal has to have some sort of manifestation that addresses obvious threats to the existence of the community, because threats are clearly not always at the level of the individual.
Extending that idea - your manifesto has to deal with the totality of libertarians in a community, because even if they are all rugged individualists, they are going to be living in proximity to each other, and to other communities; and as a community will be interacting with other communities culturally, economically, and at some point militarily. (And to be sure, those other communities will view libertarians as a group, even if they themselves do not.)
It is my suspicion that about the same percentage of individuals who now submit to joining the military would, in a free society, choose to organize themselves along military lines and train, train, train.
In any big group you are going to have those people who feel a need for the "brotherhood" of soldierdom. And, in a free society no one would prohibit their hobby or their tools.
They might even solicit voluntary contributions to fund themselves by letting people buy tickets to watch war games in person, or perhaps they can have their own TV/internet show with sponsors. Besides those who simply want to donate for "the common defense".
Would that be sufficient? Would the fact that just about everyone else in the society would be armed be a help or a hindrance? You tell me.
Perf,
1. I still insist that this is an aside. It's an aside because the thesis of this sequence was trying very hard to be: Why should we move in the direction of less government?
I'm not arguing here about how close to anarchistan we'd like to get. Rather...I think that *all* of my arguments point at this thesis:
From here...let's have less government.
Indeed...it may be that you're correct that it's impossible to defend an anarchia, and we'll need something like government. But...
that question is a LONG ways from here. From here, regardless of your position on what the military structure looks like after we've hit night watchman state behavior...and whether we can go further...it's still true that from here, the direction is blatantly obvious.
2. I think that the question of national defense is the *only* tricky question left (on my plate) in the anarchosphere. Police and legal system? That can pretty easily be privatized...and it's actually higher on my priority system to privatize that than other elements of the system.
3. I'm halfway to Jehu's position here. Get a nuke, stop arguing.
4. On the other side...I don't think it's tremendously hard in a world where money flows like honey (is that the metaphor?) to collect 1% of GDP for national defense...especially if you get naming rights for the tanks and stuff.
5. I think that National GDP is an awful large part of the issue. As per your explanation of who we wouldn't match up well against.
6. Conquering a leaderless place is hard. See: afghanistan. Also, David Friedman on Irish resistance to England over 2-4 centuries.
1) Conquering leaderless places is hard.
2) But, fucking shit up in leaderless places is relatively easy. (both locals in Mogadishu and Soviet Destroy-and-Search in Afghanistan)
3) Fighting Leviathan toe to toe is suicide, even for Behemoth.
4) But Leviathan is half-blind and half-stupid. (distributed knowledge, inefficiency of large institutions, Iraq, Vietnam etc.)
5) Clever "anarcho"-terrorists can fuck up some high value things with results all in disproportion to the costs, and Leviathan is too clumsy to do much about it. (IRA was the king of this. McVeigh's single bombing dramatically reversed the US govt's domestic terrorism. Al-Qaeda is not even that clever and achieved results all out of proportion to the costs.)
6) The more Leviathan blunders about, squashing people and smashing the china, and getting stung by hornets, the less plausible it looks as the object of our affiliation.
7) But, alas, there is a lot of ruin in a nation. And, the red giant state can stick around for a long time, disrupting things, but not creating anything. Here the state will continue to suck the blood of anyone with a credit rating, but will be completely incapable of stopping an ever-growing black market. The problem for us libertarians, is that we can see that the state disrupts the open access order, but the most convenient replacement for most will be the older, still less efficient, tribal affiliations, to which we are even less well suited.
8) Our hope here, and it is a small one, is to have answers ready which make sense, when all of the old beliefs no longer work to frame the world as it has become. Just as the Judaism of the old testament was no longer plausible after the degraded state of Israel after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans. And thus it was replaced by Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism. (Unfortunately for us now, it was not only after the destruction of the temple, but also after conquest by the Romans, Greeks, Persians, Babylonians and Assyrians.)
I grow so weary of having to defend my libertarian beliefs from the strawman position set up for me by my opponent of defending total anarchy.
I do not believe that anarchy could work unless you set up a utopia with a very strict demographic and only allowed people in who were willing to participate - and then it wouldn't be an anarchy, then, would it? Anarcy relies on an idealistic interpretation of human nature that doesn't exist - much the same as communism does. Neither would work because humans are unfortunately a very imperfect vessel.
However, it is precisly BECAUSE humans are an imperfect vessel that I believe that we need to be constantly working to REDUCE the amount of power other imperfect humans have over us, and to always be asking the question "does this really need the force and violence of government behind it to make it work?" and if it does not, then remove it from governmental purview.
As for a libertarian utopia being able to defend itself, I find it funny that as of right now, we have an all-volunteer army that is currently fighting two wars and guarding against aggression in Korea and also defending the homeland at the same time, and yet people think that a society that didn't force people to join the army would be defensless.
That, actually, is one of the biggest blinders people have to libertarianism - they say "IT WON'T WORK!" when the real world shows them how it will work every single day - they just can't see it.
As for the strawman that libertarians like corporations - that one is also tiresome. We don't like anyone having power over us, but if we have to live under such conditions, we would prefer working with a private entity where we have a choice to use them or not, or use a competitor, and so forth, as opposed to being forced to use government, or the government-approved psuedo-corporation of their choice, as the situation is now.
Libertarianism in a nutshell
"I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing." -- Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest.
However, it is precisly BECAUSE humans are an imperfect vessel that I believe that we need to be constantly working to REDUCE the amount of power other imperfect humans have over us, and to always be asking the question "does this really need the force and violence of government behind it to make it work?" and if it does not, then remove it from governmental purview.
Some people (e.g. Charles and David Koch) are more powerful than others. Getting rid of government would not lessen the power that these elites have over private individuals, it would enhance it.
What makes you think that the forces arrayed by these elites in a hypothetical world/land without government would be any less violent, coercive, or ubiquitous than our current state of affairs? In short, after you cut the nuts off of the state, who protects powerless individuals from powerful individuals or groups of individuals (often referred to as corporations)?
I think that the answer is "no one", and I think that this points to a world in which the vast majority of people are enslaved by groups of powerful individuals (often referred to as corporations), who, (I think it is safe to say) will be much less constrained in their violence/coercion than the current government, because there will be no public forces to constrain them.
Robert Heinlein did a nice job putting forth some of these arguments in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which I'm currently rereading for about the 17th time. I especially like the idea of a constitution that requires a 3/5 majority to pass laws, and only 2/5 to repeal them. Or 4/5 and 1/5; I'm easy.
Gothean,
Among the major lines of libertarian thought, and I thought I referenced it (more than once), is that powerful individuals effectively always end up controlling the government.
If this is true, then your wish that the government will protect the weak becomes just a wish...and the government instead becomes a lever with which the powerful people can screw the weak more effectively, rather than a constraint upon them.
I think there are few people who would disagree that being less subject to the arbitrary whim of the powerful is a good thing. The question under dispute is which side (more or less subject) does government lean towards. The progressives tend to think that government benefits the weak at the expense of the strong. The libertarians tend to think that's all marketing. Rather, we believe that government (tends strongly to) benefit the strong at the expense of the weak.
We don't object to your goal...we think government works against it.
"the state, who protects powerless individuals from powerful individuals"
You want to be arguing about "Should the state be smaller?" but what's really at issue is "Does the state protect the powerless from the powerful?" We say no. Do you say yes for North Korea? Zaire? Venezuela? Russia? Brazil? Singapore? Japan? Sweden? (Consider the recent crackdown there against home schooling.)
"or groups of individuals (often referred to as corporations)"
And other groups of powerful individuals are often referred to as states. Why should they get a pass?
Gothean tries to set me up for the strawman argument again, forcing me to argue from the position of protecting total anarchy and not libertarianism. It's almost like he didn't even bother to read what I had just gotten finished writing on that exact topic. Huh. Imagine that.
Gothean - i was going to ignore you, but i simply cannot miss the chance to ask you - what exact power over the people do you foresee Koch having in a society with less government?
What force and violence will they be able to legally bring down on me?
Be specific.
"Legally"?
The point isn't what they can do legally. If the government isn't strong enough to enforce the law, then "legally" doesn't matter. If you have a corporation which is stronger than the government, then legal constraints don't matter. How is the government going to enforce the law against an entity which is more powerful than the government?
Goethean - can you understand that there is a huge distance between the government that we have now, and a government that is too weak to do something about a rampaging robber bandit? That possibly, the argument that we should maybe be on a different point on that continuum is valid and can be had without getting all pearl-clutchey about people's rights getting trampled by modern day Rockefellers?
Or are you just absolutely set on continuing to argue from a false position where I am standing in the "total anarchy" zone? Because if it's the former, I'm glad to have that talk. If it's the latter, leave me alone, because I have no time or you.
So you want the government to be larger than the largest transnational corporation? Or smaller?
Or exactly the same size?
goethean- "If the government isn't strong enough to enforce the law, then 'legally' doesn't matter."
Then who's going to prevent me from acting in self defense against this entity (or the individual goon it sends) which is attacking me?
I presume that I will not be a match for Koch's private security force.
Goethean;
The largest company on earth has a revenue of about $500 billion dollars. That same company has about 30,000 unarmed employees. The US government has a revenue of about 2 trillion-ish, if memory serves, and ends up spending 3 trillion (putting the rest on our grandkid's credit card). They employ 1.8 MILLION unarmed people, 50,000 armed law enforcement people, and a 250,000 man active army with a slightly smaller reserve force. They also hold a monopoly on the use of force, mandated by law.
I'd say we have a little wiggle room before we need to start gasping about corporations taking over because the government is less powerful than they are.
But I realize that none of this matters to you, because you don't actually want rational arguments at this point - you've decided where I'm arguing from already no matter what I say.
As for Koch's private security force, can you explain to me what, exactly, the business plan you have in mind for Koch is that they are going to be violently attacking citizens - you know, their cutomers? The people who keep them in business and are free to take their business elsewhere if they so choose?
This evil Koch enterprise you're discussing is starting to sound remakably like a government, to me.
Three lines.
1.
And I presume that I will not be a match for Disney's private army of monopoly-enforcers. Oh, wait...that's the federal government...and I'm not.
The issue is still not what you're trying to make it. The issue is does government reduce or magnify the power of the rich/strong.
The libertarian argument is that it magnifies private power, rather than mitigating it like we all wish it would...and that said magnification is inevitable.
2.
Along Kent's line... you need to make the argument that violent suppression is "good for business". By observation (and theory)...it's generally not. Mutual defense pacts can pretty easily convince corporations that the cost of violent aggression is substantially higher than the price they want to pay. This is much easier to do when they're spending their money, than when they're spending my money.
3.
This is all irrelevant to this post. This post, and the following, are reasons to agitate for less governance, rather than more governance...and while some other posts on this blog might be a good location to debate the violence-probabilities inherent in anarchist, or near-anarchist approaches...this post isn't that one.
Goober,
I like your point. Please keep the comments about the topic, not about the commenter.
Exactly my point. After you geniuses dismantle the public sector, the largest/most powerful entities will fight for control of the vacuum. If you take a history class, you'll learn about company towns, which provided everything to workers --- housing, food, etc --- at jacked-up prices. Workers will be slaves. That's basically the dystopia that you yearn for.
Company towns- any monopoly- can't be maintained without government coercion.
Goethean,
1. That is probably the best argument I'm aware of against anarchy. The distinction between a government and a corporation is invisible. Doesn't say much for governments as they stand...but it's a strong argument that an anarchy devolves into government.
2. On the other hand...we actually have no clue whether that will happen. We're *all* blowing smoke from our nether regions. Your intuition seems believable to many of us (myself included). At the same time, the intuition that it wouldn't happen *also* seems believeable to many of us (myself also included). Overall, I am suspicious of our intuitions about stuff that we haven't seen/tried. The only thing we've seen even close in living memory is Somalia...which sucked very badly under government...then went anarchist/polycentric (dis-?) order...and which is now doing better than it was under government, as an anarchy. Have thugs moved in and instituted pseudo-government? No. Is it a paradise? No. Would it work (impove as compared to government) in a more complex/industrial system. I have no F'in clue. And you don't either.
3. Large entities will fight for control maybe, if it seems profitable, and there's no sizeable resistance. GM does not seem likely to turn large profits by employing an army. All cost, low benefit. Especially since almost all value in employees comes from high-end, uncoerceable workers. Even the romans paid the slaves who were valuable...because they discovered that coercion failed. I think the notion that it's profitable for any currently existing entity to branch out into thuggery highly suspicious.
4. Company towns come from massive scarcity, from historical difficulties in moving goods and services. It takes a lot of work to demonstrate that Amazon + Fedex + Visa + Competition for workers don't automatically solve the company-town problem.
> The only thing we've seen even close in living memory is Somalia
Oh, there's also Iraq circa 2006, and Russia right now, which is mostly run by oil tycoons, and which you could probably move to right now rather than attempting to transform the US into your dystopia, and fucking the rest of us us over in the process. But I guess that it's much more pleasant to leech off of a system which was built by the system that you denounce as it descends into corporatism rather than actually living the libertarian nightmare. There are plenty of countries with less government than the US. If any of you actually believed any of this hooey, you'd move to one of those countries.
Here is the list of countries with a lower tax revenue than the US, in order by tax revenue as a % of GDP (source = Wikipedia):
United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Equatorial Guinea, Oman, Qatar, Libya, Chad, Bahrain, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Angola, Congo, Republic of, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Algeria, Central African Republic, Cambodia, Guinea, Bangladesh, Haiti, Pakistan, Gabon, Sierra Leone, Panama, Bhutan, Madagascar, Syria, Laos, Nepal, Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Comoros, Paraguay, Tanzania, Federated States of Micronesia, Taiwan, Uganda, Hong Kong, Congo, Democratic Republic of, Ecuador, Liberia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Armenia, Rwanda, Singapore, Lebanon, Philippines, Tunisia, Dominican Republic, Peru, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Sri Lanka, Benin, Mauritania, Malaysia, Togo, Honduras, Egypt, Zambia, Tajikistan, China, Thailand, Burundi, São Tomé and Príncipe, India, Azerbaijan, Nicaragua, Vanuatu, Cameroon, Kenya, Chile, Bahamas, The, Gambia, Mauritius, Senegal, Djibouti, Macau, Turkmenistan, Maldives, Malawi, Ghana, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Belize, Georgia, Fiji, Suriname, Morocco, Albania, Cape Verde, Colombia, Saint Lucia, Uruguay, Belarus, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Venezuela, Samoa, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Croatia, Korea, South, Kazakhstan, South Africa
"...f***ing the rest of us us [sic] over in the process"
It never ceases to amaze me how collectivists consider me asking to be left alone, to live my life as I see fit- as long as I don't attack or steal- to be somehow hurting them. They must be very fragile.
They would be completely free, in a free society, to form their own collectivist enclaves based upon whatever rules they want, as long as they don't force themselves on anyone else. (Not even separated from anyone else, just based on a different set of rules, like the way Baptists, Catholics, and athiests can live mixed together in the same neighborhood.) Yet that is never good enough. They demand the power to force me to pretend their "system" is just as valid as any other, and kill me if I would prefer to opt out.
And, they are always happy to offer to "allow" me to abandon my friends, family, and property to their kind and go somewhere else that would be no better. No thanks. That offer goes both ways- there are plenty of places where collectivism is even more "progressive" than America- why can't they go to these already "paradisical" sociliast Utopias? If it's good enough for me to have to do, shouldn't it be good enough for them?
But, I am not that way. I have no problem sharing a landmass with collectivists as long as they stop pretending they have any sort of right to steal from those who do not consent, or to attack those who disagree. But that's the problem, isn't it. Collectivists believe they have the "right" to kill people who disagree with them, and libertarians don't.
Aretae;
That wasn't meant as an attack on Goethean, just a statement of fact about him. I will try to keep it about the discussion from now on, but I can't help but point out that after I said that, his very first words in the next post were to accuse us (and me) of wanting to "tear down the public sector" which proved my point beyond anything that I could possibly attempt to show with my own words - he doesn't want to have a discussion about reducing the size of the government. He wants to have a discussion about how we are all idiots for wanting anarchy. He has decided where we stand despite having been corrected on that numerous times by several different folks, you and me both included.
Goethean - I note that this same discussion, when I've had it in the past, typically erodes into a discussion of how libertarians are just cheap skates who don't want to pay taxes. I see you setting us up for that with your "list" above.
Don't go there. It is a non-sequitur and has nothing to do with the discussion about increasing freedom, which is what the discussion is about.
Goethean,
1. Your other 2 "low-government" exampes stink. Those are both government-broken (US government trying to break Iraq, 10 year government transition from "communist" to dictator in the other. Do you also want to include stone-age Afghanistan whose government was bombed back into the wood-age by US bombers? Somalia is a stable, long-term non-government model.
2. "If any of you actually believed any of this hooey, you'd move to one of those countries." is absurd. Like thinking that the idiots who were hyper-anti-Bush should all move to France.
Crappy government isn't the only reason to not live in a country. Yes, I think Hong Kong and Singapore have smaller, better governments...but, for instance, I object more to Singapore's mandatory draft than I do to US taxes...and China isn't exactly a freedom-lover's paradise.
The combination of pseudo-libertarian corporatism combined with a virulent and contradictory advocacy of Christian theocracy has been destroying US society since the Reagan Revolution. It is simply a story which the rich are using to manipulate society. The Tea Party nonsense is the latest episode of this idiocy. Your yearning for dystopia has real-world effects on your life --- all negative, of course. It has reduced conservatism in the US to joke status, a joke which about 50% of the electorate is willing to vote into office.
There are plenty of countries with limited government, which I listed above. Non-coincidentally, they are all third-world hell-holes. Of course none of you brave freedom fighters are willing to actually leave your keyboards and investigate the effects of your dystopian yearning when it is put into practice.
You can set up whatever fantasy dreamland you want in which liberals are murderers and pseudo-libertarian conservatives are shiny happy freedom fighters, but it has nothing to do with the real history of political thought or political reality on planet earth.
Libertarians don't want to get rid of the public sector?
No, its a discussion about how you don't have the balls to investigate where your ideal has been put into practice on planet Earth.
Goethean,
In your opinion, was Antigone the lawless one, the source of disorder, or was Creon?
goethian- "The combination of pseudo-libertarian corporatism combined with a virulent and contradictory advocacy of Christian theocracy has been destroying US society since the Reagan Revolution."
Pseudo-libertarian. Not libertarian. Libertarians are opposed to corporatism. Most, if not all, are also opposed to a theocracy based upon ANY superstitions, not just Christianity.
And, for the record, yes, I am an anarchist. Or a voluntaryist. Or a sovereign individual. Or a libertarian. Whatever you want to call it. Anarchy is the only system that has ever worked, ever can work, and I suspect, ever will work. It's how each of us lives our normal lives. I don't ask permission to eat or seek a permit to fall in love. Do you? That's anarchy. It isn't scary; it isn't chaos. It is self-organizing and civilized. Socialists who toss bombs in store windows aren't anarchists no matter what they may be called- they don't have any ethical opposition to a Ruler; they just want a Ruler who is on their "side".
I count pretty much all libertarians as pseudo-libertarian corporatists. In seeking to dismantle the public sector, you act as a tool for the private sector, which is ruled by large corporations. The myth of libertarianism, that a private sector will be completely empty of power regimes, is destroying US society by delivering it to corporate interests.
Well, you can count all rabbits as "pseudo-crocodiles" too then.
The "public sector" is imaginary. Everything is either done voluntarily or by coercion and theft. You have chosen your side.
I gave Goober a warning about civility. This is one for you Goethian.
And most libertarians count all statists as pseudo-fascist corporatists. In seeking to increase the power of the state, you act as a tool for the large corporaations. The myth of government, that a government can restain power regimes, rather than be coopted by them is destroying US society by delivering it to corporate interests.
I don't know how your assertion or mine moves the discussion forward. But you're attacking the wrong target. By listening, we agree on goals...but each of us think that the other's methods are horrible and result in a thorough destruction of the goals we both profess.
Um...obviously, Antigone is the protagonist of Sophocles' Antigone. Just because I believe that government should exist doesn't mean that I would support Stalinism or the Third Reich or forcing people to transgress their religious customs...right?
No, the public sector is the government, and the government is not imaginary. And the myth of a regime-free private sector is worsening everyone's life, including your own.
Goethian,
"The combination of pseudo-libertarian corporatism combined with a virulent and contradictory advocacy of Christian theocracy has been destroying US society since the Reagan Revolution. It is simply a story which the rich are using to manipulate society. The Tea Party nonsense is the latest episode of this idiocy. Your yearning for dystopia has real-world effects on your life --- all negative, of course. It has reduced conservatism in the US to joke status, a joke which about 50% of the electorate is willing to vote into office."
You keep doing this. Giant assertions that libertarians, were they interested, could match, word for word with their own assertions.
The combination of pseudo-progressive fascism combined with a virulent and contradictory advocacy of utopian communism has been destroying the US since the New Deal. It is simply a story that the rich are using to manipulate society. The OWS nonsense is the latest episode of that...ok. I'm bored with that.
You have lots of assertions...none of which are relevant to this post, in the first place, and none of which appear to be well supported besides.
Your poor low government list is good...except that the only places on your list listed as good for business are Singapore and Hong Kong, both wonderful places to live...and as the freest places in the world. Perhaps you can move to India or Cuba as good socialist countries that do things how you like?
Can you please try some arguments, rather than just assertions of your preferences? Respond to other folks arguments directly, instead of dodging to make a new, different, unrelated assertion?
> And most libertarians count all statists as pseudo-fascist corporatists.
Yes, but one of us is talking about political reality and one of us is playing games with words. You could insert something about the flying spaghetti monster for all the sense that your formulation makes.
> Perhaps you can move to India or Cuba as good socialist countries that do things how you like?
India is on my list of counties with a lower tax rates than the US. So it is the "libertarians" who would want to move there.
And you conveniently forgot to mention that the countries that a statist like myself would want to move to include all of Europe. And Europe got to where it is through statism, not "libertarianism".
India is on my list of counties with a lower tax rates than the US. So it is the "libertarians" who would want to move there
Yes, because the only thing that matters to libertarians is a low tax rate.
Aretae, do you see now that I wasn't attacking him, but rather his inability to argue the topic at hand and his insistance that we only argue from the false starting point that he assigns to us? I'm not sure how pointing that out was an attack against him.
And no, Goethean, I have absolutely zero desire to "tear down" the public sector. I have every desire in the world to have a logical, reasoned discussion about what parts of the public sector are not working and need to be removed or redone, and what parts of the public sector could be reduced or pulled back to make life easier for everyone.
Do a search on the EPA head's recent discussion about ancient Rome and crucifixion, and then come back to me and tell me that the EPA might not possibly need a bit of work.
Goober,
My comment-rules: Keep talking about the topic, not the person. Feel free to request that I ban a troll. I think that you crossed that line, and Goethean crossed it as well. I recognize the impulse, and have felt it during this particular discussion, but think strongly that it's bad debating form, in that it lessens the quality of the discussion. Though your impulse seems to have been correct, and you were quicker to spot it than I was, it's still bad debating form.
Goethian,
Yes, but one of us is talking about political reality and one of us is playing games with words. You could insert something about the flying spaghetti monster for all the sense that your formulation makes.
I was working at blue cross while Obamacare was being built. Obamacare is 98% a product of lobbyists, making it illegal to do things they don't like...and 2% a product of good, weak-protecting progressive instincts. I watched it happening.
The assertion from the libertarian side is that this is roughly true of all law. Law is stuff corporations build, and give to governments to pass. Law is a tool corporations use to control people.
If we're right...then yours is the unintelligible position, and ours is obvious. But we can't get to an agreement over truth with assertions, and no counterpoint.
> I was working at blue cross while Obamacare was being built.
> Obamacare is 98% a product of lobbyists, making it illegal
> to do things they don't like...and 2% a product of good,
> weak-protecting progressive instincts. I watched it happening.
Yeah, isn't it a crying shame that tens of millions of people will be forced at the point of a gun to have health care by that fascist mofo Obama? Especially the poor people who will get health care for free and probably would have suffered chronic illnesses and/or death otherwise. Keep up the good fight against liberal fascism, guys!
I'm sure that all of you will stand on your high moral principles and refuse any health coverage that Obama's bill would potentially afford you. That's what Gandhi would have done.
Then again, Gandhi was a fascist mofo by your standards anyhow.
I can't believe that you're sufficiently badly informed or blindered as to honestly write the last two comments...so I have to assume it's trolling. Try elsewhere?
And Europe got to where it is through statism, not "libertarianism".
What, you mean "on the verge of bankruptcy from crushing debts incurred by massive social spending obligations?" I agree. I absolutely, positively agree. This statement is pure, unvarnished truth. Thanks for posting it, Goethean!
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